Fact-Checking the 10Th Letter Riddle: Is It 'И', 'Й', or Something Else?
The entire riddle hinges on the controversial seventh character: Ё (pronounced yo). Invented in 1783 by Princess Ekaterina Dashkova and popularized by writer Nikolay Karamzin, the letter represents the stressed vowel sound /jo/ or /o/ following a soft consonant. Despite its phonetic utility, Russian printers quickly developed a lazy habit: omitting the two umlaut-style dots above the letter to save ink, lead type, and typesetting time.
That cost-saving shortcut survived the transition into the digital era. On standard Russian computer keyboards, Ё is banished to the top-left corner on the tilde key, physically separated from the rest of the Cyrillic block. On smartphone virtual keyboards, typing Ё often demands a sustained long-press on Е.
Because official orthographic conventions permit writers to replace Ё with standard Е in general fiction, journalism, and casual correspondence, reserving mandatory dots only for children’s books, foreign learner texts, and disambiguating homographs like все (everyone) versus всё (everything), speakers mentally merge the two. When reciting the Cyrillic alphabet order quickly, they jump straight from Е (letter 6) to Ж (letter 8). By erasing position seven, every subsequent character shifts up by one slot. That single omission is what propels Й falsely into position 10.
